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rant rant rant rant rant rant.....
2002-04-27 00:39:52
The german presentation went very well. Everyone reacted well to Ranma, sang along with the bad German Nadia opening and enjoyed watching the real Blue Water video.
The paper that's due Tuesday is at 3.5 pages. If I convert it to Courier New font (acceptable) then it's 4.5. I am very likely to do this when I get up around 8-9 pages or so, that way I can wrap it up with less work. I don't like using this kind of cheap technique, but I really don't want to write this paper.
My Nazi Europe paper, on the other hand, is proving to have an interesting topic after all - it's going to be about the Nazi propaganda films, so I have an excuse to pick up the SE of Triumph of the Will and write it off as a school expense (and have an excuse for the undoubtedly nasty look I'll get at Suncoast for buying it)...pity that I've got to pay the full $35 for it tho if I want to have it in time to use the DVD commentary as a source. I'm willing to bet that bitch Turabian's book doesn't tell you how to cite a commentary either. *sigh*
Big stuff to do this week:
-Mail out the 10 packages sitting on my couch
-Finish French Revolution Paper
-Pay for Study Abroad
-Do a shitload of Norse
-I think I have a German exam next Friday...
-Research for Nazi Europe Paper
-Find a Summer Sublet
I can't believe how fast time is flying. It's damn scary, and to make matters worse I'm only getting more and more stressed as it hits. At least I'm not trying to finish an AMV through all of it this time, I just have to get it mailed in....and run off to VHS for AMA. Otakon'll be taking my 10Mbit/sec MPEG-2.
I hate norse. I'm so fucking pissed, I had to recite on Thursday and while my translation was spot on I got reamed because I couldn't keep up with his silly little linguistic games. It takes me maybe 2-3 minutes to do a sentence without playing the games and 20-30 minutes to do a sentence with them. It's a lot of work and a lot of TIME, and that's the one thing that I don't have right now.
Actually I have a ton of time, the problem is that I need so much downtime to keep my sanity that I don't put time into my work, which means I get all guilty about not spending enough time on my work. It's a vicious cycle and I'm really getting that way about everything. It's only adding to the stress.
Mark has got his work,
They say Mark lives for his work,
And Mark's in love with his work,
Mark hides in his work.
Does anyone appreciate the stuff I'm putting out? Has anyone ever? I ignore what all my friends say just on the grounds that they're friends - of course they're going to say it's good, no one's friends will tell them something is shit to their face. Maybe that's why I'm so desperate to get stuff shown and why I feel like I always have to be there when it happens. But honestly, if I stopped doing all of this would anyone care?
As far as the forums are concerned, I really don't know why I bother reading them anymore. The quality of posts is nonexistant. It's all pointless flaming, and I really do feel sorry for anyone who's trying to get some sort of useful information out of them. I'm starting to think there should be a rule about even if you're not an adult legally you should act like one. Something like if you can afford (or at least pass yourself off as being able to afford) working on this you should act like you're old enough to be earning the money to do so.
I want a cigarette and I'm not sure why - I don't smoke. I've been hanging out after German with Jen and Hans too much, their bad habits are wearing off onto me.
And so another session of me bs'ing about my life is over. I'm amazed that I've got over 2500 journal hits. It's not like I'm doing anything cool like EK or StudioKZ or famous like Doki or Quu. Weird, ain't it. -
Another weekend over
2002-04-14 20:45:09
Another weekend over, another weekend wasted.
KZ: Glad to see you back in the states. Try and get up here for AnimeUSA, it seems like that's just gonna be another big post-awa gathering from the looks of things.
Re: Hentai vids and such, I'm cool with no direct links, but I think that the forum thread has reached useless flaming now.
EK: Have you tried Southwest Airlines? They fly in and out of BWI for pretty cheap.
I've found that randomizing my winamp playlist and playing that straight through gives me a much better musical variety than hitting shuffle. Things seem to be less repetitive and I'm not hearing the same album 3 tracks in a row anymore.
The video's reached another plateau. Hopefully this week can bring some insight so I can wrap it up. I've also got to finish my HIST220 draft and some reading for french revolution. And norse. fucking norse. How I wish I hadn't signed up for that class. So damn boring and such bullshit.
Animenation's email has been down all day. It's rather annoying when I try to check my mail and can't. Forutnately that's not my important email box. Still, it's another annoyance to life.
Did some airfare research, unless I fly to Frankfurt (which is out of the way and on my least favorite airline....well, yeah, least favorite) it's gonna run me 4 digits to fly this summer. Not pretty, but what's a guy to do? I've got to get there somehow. I also need to register for summer classes.
OK, this journal entry sucked. -
Back to life, back to reality
2002-04-11 11:45:33
The initial excitement and shock of yesterday morning's amazing news has worn off, and I'm back to doing work and such again. I still hate norse, I have to leave for it in about 55 minutes, but I don't want to. It's getting harder and harder to drag my ass out of the house, walk 15 minutes, sit in flek's stuffy classroom, listen to him drone about dipthongs and ablauts and umlauts and werner's law and third weak stem verbs and root nouns and all this crap that I just don't care about. I just want to get my B and go.
I had a german exam this morning. I feel....less than confident about my results. I totally missed what they were saying on one of the listening questions (but got the others I think...), and the vocab was extremely confusing, to the point where I felt like we didn't have enough information to do it (it was a fill in the blank, 10 words, short paragraph)...let's not talk about relative clauses, and zu constructions were OK. I think I did fine on the reading, and even though I was *extremely* simplistic with my essay, I think I did OK on it - I had to write it in about three minutes - not bad for a 15 sentence dialog about stereotypes of americans. Nonetheless, it's doubtful that the teacher will have it graded by tomorrow, so I don't get to have a nasty breakdown then. I do want a nice, solid German grammar though, as our textbook has proven itself effectively useless in terms of providing realistic and/or useful examples (four examples on how to do one of the more obscure and annoying aspects of the German language and they're so simplistic that they're useless when doing the homework?! And you people managed to get a major univeristy to adopt this book?! Not to mention the insane number of typos and errors that we've found in class - the STUDENTS finding them and NOT the instructors....)
Gotta do my essay tonight. I haven't looked at what it is yet, but it'll get done, set aside for a while, and revised. I've also got to hack out another page or so on the Contact paper. Actually it should be two pages or so on the Contact paper - the draft is due towards the end of next week and I've only finished page 3 of the draft (and it's supposed to be.....10-15). Time to get my ass into gear. I've also got to do some reading for French Revolution so I can write my paper. It's more work that I need to do but don't want to.
On the AMV front, things are getting better. I need to finish working out the ending (this is the first video I've done that probably WON"T have an ending that's 100% suck....) but then I get to finish working out the rest of the video. I need to check my last full export (or make a new one) and do a new timesheet to see where I feel I need to make more edits and cuts and adjustments and such. I feel bad for the poor person who's agreed to help me through on this project, it's like I'm dumping all my editing issues on him and being an incredible pain in the ass, especially as he's started doing his OWN video for the summer cons, leading me to think that I should really just try to finish this on my own.
No matter what, it's going to be either third time's the charm, or three strikes I'm out. I'm hoping for the former, won't be surprised about the latter. It'll definately be time for some reflection if it is the latter.
As far as Austria is concerned, I've begun doing some of the preliminary travel research. It's gonna be damned expensive to get over there, but part of that is because I'm going to be gone for over 30 days, which automatically doubles the cost of airfare. I'd possibly be better off getting two cheap round trip tickets and throwing away half of each, that's something worth checking into. A train pass is also going to be more expensive than I thought, but what's a person to do nowadays? I'll pay through the nose and live with it. These are things that simply can't be negotiated.
I need to get to the mall. While I hate places like malls, they are locations which I do have reason to visit on occasion. In this case it's because after about 2 years or so I've started wearing down my wardrobe and need to get new things to wear that aren't beaten to a bloody pulp. Likewise I need to get somewhere that I can pick up a new pair of boots - I've worn through most of the sole on the left one. I wish I had a car easily available, it'd make taking care of errands so much easier and less stressful. Hopefully it'll happen over the summer during the time when I'm not doing summer classes, Austria, or the post-austria-still-in-europe-vacation.
I just wonder if I know what I've really gotten myself into. -
Dear <name removed for privacy reasons>
2002-04-10 05:59:30
It is my pleasure to inform you that you are accepted to the International
Summer Program 2002. Your application documents were convincing and your
academic record seems to be very good. Congratulations!
I'm going to Austria. w00h00!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -
Ein Andermal
2002-04-06 11:26:38
Letzte nacht ging ich nach UMBC. Es war so-lala, finde ich die Anime (RK, Noir, LH, Angelic Layer) nicht so geil, aber die Volk macht mir spaß.
For some reason, I just felt like doing the front of my journal in German. Still, UMBC has become my "see people" club while TAS is my "see anime" club. I'm not quite sure why I really go to umbc anymore, and I think there's a few others there who also go, not to see the anime, but because there's friends there. They're having AMV week next week tho, and guess who isn't enough of an "active member" to help run the workshop on AMV but is to supply stuff since they're worried about running out of vids to show. The general concensus from AMV friends is to fuck 'em and no-show, but part of me wants to go just to see how bad it gets.
Eric and I are approaching the point of not speaking to each other other than "good morning," "can you turn that down," etc. I think he's also starting to drive Chris a bit nuts as well. I feel bad about not being the nicest person, but it's clue by four or no understanding *sigh*
Quu: I tend to mostly read the 10 most updated journals, but if I see a reference to someone I try to go through and read it. This is because the people who tend to write the most tend to write the most interesting stuff and therefore show up on the 10 most updated soon. It would be very nice if Phade would implement a buddy list system for journals, wouldn't it.
There's about one more week before I find out if I'm going to Austria this summer. Waiting is a great educational experience (read Zen and the Art of Archery for more info on that) but it's still damn annoying. Still, there's enough other work to keep me distracted until the eagerly awaited result comes.
Current Paper Status:
HIST220 - Research 45%, 2 pages drafted
HIST436 - Research 2%, 0 pages drafted
HIST319 - Research 0%, 0 pages drafted
AMV Status:
Ohboy. I've finished the first rough cut, which will be an extra on my next CD edition. It's going to be that different. After having some very good conversations with a couple people and getting some help above and beyond the call of duty from another, things are starting to come into focus. I wish I'd have some extra time to work on this, but it's going to be very tight and unfortunately disrupt my schoolwork to finish in time for the Otakon deadline. After that I'll have about a week of time to do last minute fixes before sending it to AMA, where I actually plan on attending. I do feel hypocritical about sending a vid to Otakon when I won't be there, but....it's Otakon. There's no way that I *can't* send a video, even if it does mean getting shot down for a third year in a row. If nothing else it's a humbling experience I guess.
So I'm at about 2:30 of 4:15 on the revised cut, which is good in some ways because it means I'm making progress, but on the other hand I think I'm moving a bit too fast. Right now I just want to get everything about right and I can always hack out details later. It's also nice 'cuz the ending parts of the video are going to have the least amount of rework from scratch to be done to them. This is definately proving to be one of the most complex vids I've ever worked on. It's the first time I've had to go up to Video 7 (I think the prior record was 5 or 6 on Daicon V...Sugar was done on 4 IIRC and JATV used 3 at most.) I could probably do this on 6 or less, but there's a lot of sequences with some heavy and semi-complex layering and so 7 is used for things around and during those so that I've got some visual breathing space in Premiere.
I just hope that I can get this to look decently and work right in time. The idea's definately solidifying and I can see more cohesion in the daily exports but it's still not there yet and I know it. Whether knowing is half the battle or not is not for me to answer, but it's still important.
"Check One, Check One, When I come down I come down right to the sun...."
Schizzo was cool. Mad props to nightowl for making something like that. It'll be fun to see if babbit can make anything even close hehehehe.
Back to AMV ranting....
I wonder if anyone'll get this video. Likewise I wonder if anyone will care. Not only am I working with an obscure title (it's licensed and for sale in suncoasts but no one's heard of it) but those who have heard of it either love it (the minority) or hate it. To top it off, it's another heavy drama video, which turns off still more people. I'm not stupid, I know that drama's the section that everyone fast forwards through on the contest tapes. They want the action, the upbeat stuff, and the comedy. I know because I usually do that myself, but I still want this to succeed. There are very few people whose respect I feel the need to earn with my work, but MP and DJ are two of the big ones, and I hope that I can get there this time.
"Maybe this time I'll be happy...maybe this time he'll stay...not a loser anymore...like the last time and the time before...everybody loves a winner...so nobody loves me...All the odds are...in my favor...something's bound to begin...it's gonna happen...happen sometime...maybe this time I'll win..."
Yes, I've horridly mangled that quote. It's from a great song tho and from a great show.
In the meantime, I'm going to run over to the comic store and see if they've got the fourth big book of Eagle. If not I'll probably ask them to order it for me....or I could set that $22 aside and halfway pay for the Illustrated Encyclopedia of 19th Century Land Warfare.
JOURNAL: iserlohn
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